The New York Times strikes again

A question: Do you think that style-setter of American journalism - The New
York Times - would have run its expose of still another terrorist-tracking
program if it had found out about it when the program was first set in
motion, in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks?

Would the Times have rushed the story into print and given it the front-page
play it did last week if smoke was still rising from the charred ruins of
the Twin Towers, and the ashes of the dead were still being excavated as
around-the-clock crews sifted through that mountain of debris?

Would this story have seen print while the smell of fire and smoke still
lingered over the Pentagon's blackened walls?

Would the world have been told about this secret program - well, formerly
secret program - while police and firemen and rescue crews were still trying
to locate the scattered remains of United Flight 93 in a once obscure field
in Pennsylvania?

Suppose the long succession of funerals for the cops and firefighters who
perished in the line of duty was still to come, and the country was still
deep in shock, sorrow, anger . . . and girding up for this long war to come.

Suppose this was September 2001. Would The New York Times have revealed that
various government agencies were cooperating with a European banking network
to trace the movement of funds from al-Qaida's moneymen to its operatives in
the field?

Perhaps you think even less of the Times than I do, but I can't imagine its
editors deciding back then to tell the world about this counterterrorism
program despite the pleas of government officials not to go public with the
story.

Surely even the Times would have held back at the time, when our wounds were
still fresh and other attacks were thought to be imminent, or at least
inevitable. Surely the Times would have exercised some restraint, not just
out of a concern for national security but out of an instinctive identity
with a hurt and grieving nation as it prepared to strike back at those who
did this - and those who helped them do it.

But that was then. Now, doubtless in large part because of programs like the
one the Times has just outed, the terrorist attacks that were going to
follow Sept. 11 haven't materialized. Not yet. So concerns about national
security now take second place to politics as usual, and journalism as
usual. It's back to normalcy as the sleeping giant begins to drift off
again.

The somber silence that followed Sept. 11 as the nation gathered its resolve
has given way to partisan sniping.

The news that government agencies have been able to track the terrorists'
bank transfers is now supposed to elicit outrage, not applause.